


Basic Etiquette

by ncfan



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Canon Speculation, Gen, Light Pre-Slash, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 19:04:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5837380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shuuichi gets something he wasn't looking for</p>
            </blockquote>





	Basic Etiquette

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is a follow-up to 'Things Unlooked For.' I meant it as a palate cleanser after finishing writing 'The Human Condition', but it wound up being a little heavier than I'd first expected. It's still not nearly as dark as 'The Human Condition' was, so at least there's that.

Shuuichi had had a perfectly normal day at school, thank you very much. One test, one pop quiz, one substitute teacher. His classmates ignored him and he was content to ignore them right back. Lunch went as it normally did (eating outside under a tree, occasionally pausing to stare absently at the clouds that passed lazily by). Cleaning up after school went as it normally did (Sweeping in silence, trying to avoid bumping into a classmate, muttering an apology if he did).

It was a rather thin stream of students that went walking out the front doors that afternoon—Shuuichi was one of only a few who didn’t immediately go rushing off to clubs after finishing up cleaning. Cars rolled by the main gate of the school, some slowing to a halt so a student could hop inside. Shuuichi caught the strains of conversations starting—“How was school today?” “What’d you make on that last assignment?” “Oh, honey, you don’t look so good.”—but never the answers.

His plan was to head home and, in the absence of any homework catch up on the sleep he’d lost over the last couple of nights. But then he caught a flash of black out of the corner of his eye, incongruous next to the greens and browns of the trees and grass, and the faded gray strip of road. He stopped, and frowned. There, across the road from him, standing by the trunk of an oak tree loaded down with new, soft leaves, was someone in a coal-black school uniform.

_Now, what’s he doing here?_

Shuuichi sighed internally and crossed the road. He raised an eyebrow inquiringly. “You know, it’s bad enough you always know where to find me when I’m out in the woods in the middle of nowhere. But my school, too?”

Seiji’s mouth twisted in a toothy smile. The light between the shadows of the leaves cut a rippling pattern across his face. “Do you frighten so easily, to be bothered by something like that?”

“No, but I wonder what the _police_ would make of this. I can just see the headlines now.” Shuuichi waved a hand through the air in a low arc. “’Hopeless case stalked by obnoxious pest; details at eleven.’ A child psychiatrist would have a field day with you.”

Seiji snickered, eyes gleaming. “I’m sure they’d love the opportunity to pick your brains apart as well, Shuuichi-san. But that’s not why I’m here.”

At that, Shuuichi frowned more deeply. _So why…_ He craned his head around and stared back at the school, trying to spot any unusual shadow or cloud or sign. “There’s not something weird going on at my school, is there?” he demanded, trying to remember if he’d seen any signs of ayakashi hanging around lately. No, but to be honest, Shuuichi hadn’t really been paying attention. He’d never known ayakashi to hang around in places with that many healthy people, the majority of whom had no spiritual power to speak of, if they didn’t have some pre-existing tie to the place in question. …Or maybe he just _really_ hadn’t been paying attention. That wasn’t exactly something he relished finding out about.

“Maybe. I wonder how long it would take you to find out, if it were.”

“Not as long as it’d take you,” Shuuichi retorted. “I’m the one who knows his way around in there, not you. You’d just get lost.”

Seiji’s smile turned lopsided (Shuuichi wished he could figure out just what it was about him, at the core, that Seiji found so amusing). “In any case, it’s not my problem. And that’s not why I’m here, either.”

“Oh, yeah? What is it, then?”

A soft breath of wind blew Seiji’s hair back from his face as he rooted through his book bag. “I have something for you, actually,” he said absently, gnawing at his lip as he dug through his bag—a rather un-Seiji-like gesture, Shuuichi thought. “If you’ll give me a moment, I’ll—“

“I don’t need any help, Seiji,” Shuuichi interjected, crossing his arms around his chest.

“Oh?" Seiji looked him over skeptically. “That’s not the impression I had gotten.”

Well, as far as taunts went, that was both obvious _and_ clumsy, and one Shuuichi didn’t have much patience for today. He rolled his eyes, shaking his head. “I’ll bet you’d get an impression like that,” he muttered. “But I’m telling you, I don’t need help, and I don’t _want_ it.”

“Nevertheless…” A soft, hoarse laugh escaped Seiji’s lips; the sound of it made Shuuichi’s skin prickle uncomfortably. Seiji pulled a glossy blue folder out of his book bag, the type students used to keep school notes in. He held it out to Shuuichi, who didn’t take it, but noted with increased discomfort the bridge it seemed to make between them. “…Would you really turn away from knowledge? And given freely, too?”

Shuuichi drew a slow, deep breath. He looked at Seiji’s face, smile widening to a grin all the time. He tilted his head slightly to one side so that his hair fell over his face, obscuring his right eye from view. “Is anything ever really free with you?” His voice pitched low where he hadn’t intended. Shuuichi blinked, confused. The question was still there, but where had the heat gone? Maybe the wind had stolen it away.

Of course, Seiji showed no sign of noticing any of this. “If you stick around long enough, you might find out.”

Shuuichi sighed and yanked the folder out of Seiji’s hand (He knew there was no point in doing so as roughly as he had, but couldn’t think of anything else to do). The folder was quite light; it honestly felt as though it didn’t have anything in it at all, though Shuuichi didn’t think Seiji would have gone to so much trouble to give him an empty folder. He strode away from the sidewalk, up a nearby steep hill, and wasn’t entirely surprised when Seiji followed after him. But maybe the fact that Seiji hadn’t immediately bolted and let Shuuichi do whatever he wanted with whatever he’d just been given could be taken as reassurance. Maybe Seiji wasn’t just trying to run a number on him.

Once they got over the crest of the hill, the rest of the human world might as well have melted away. The hill was swathed with tall, tender shoots of grass that swayed gently back and forth in the wind; tiny white and yellow flowers quivered with them in even the mildest breeze. Far below at the base of the hill was meadow that quickly gave way to dense forest. They were alone here; even the sound of cars rolling by grew faint as distant birdcall.

“So what happened to that last ayakashi?” Shuuichi asked as he sat down, casting a sharp glance at Seiji.

Seiji flopped down on his back in the grass, his book bag carelessly discarded beside him. “What do you mean?”

“You know _what_. The ayakashi in that cave, the one you chased me away from? You can’t seriously have forgotten about _that_.”

The answer was immediate. “Dead.”

“That’s it? That’s all you’re gonna—“

“Dead, Shuuichi-san,” Seiji said firmly, his eyes flashing. “Now,” he went on, “I’ve marked parts you might need an explanation for.” He reached up and ran his fingernail over the folder’s crisp edge. “The rest are self-explanatory.”

“Nice to know you think my reading comp needs work.” Shuuichi decided he’d drop the matter of the ayakashi they’d found in that cave until later. He _was_ getting an explanation for what happened to it, but didn’t feel like arguing it out right now. _Well, at least I’m bound to hear something about it at the next meeting._

He flipped the folder open. There were only two sheets of paper inside, written on back and front in neat, compact handwriting. There were marks made in red ink, separating three sections out from the rest of the text. Eyebrows raised slightly, Shuuichi read out, “’It is considered rude for an exorcist to engage another exorcist’s shiki in conversation unprompted.’ …” For a moment, he resisted the urge to ask why. Shuuichi had always avoided talking to strange ayakashi as a matter of principle (Ever since he’d been chased by one one too many times). But apparently only exorcists’ shiki were off-limits. That seemed… “Okay, I’ll bite. Why?”

Seiji waved a hand languidly through the air. “Well, less ‘rude’ and more ‘ill-advised.’ You never know if the ayakashi in question is at leisure or running an errand, and some ayakashi _really_ don’t like being side-tracked. You also don’t know how they feel about humans, or exorcists. There are some who bind their shiki to keep them from harming other exorcists, but not everyone does that.” He passed his hand over his eyes and flashed a brief grin up at Shuuichi. “Of course, there are those capable of restraining ayakashi on short notice, but I don’t think you’re quite at that level yet.”

Shuuichi resisted the urge to swat him over the head with the folder. “And if somebody’s shiki starts talking to me? What then?” He already knew the answer to that question, but it was almost worth it just to hear what sort of screwball answer Seiji would give.

“In that case, I’d say you better answer. Unless you want to end up as someone’s toothpick, that is.”

Ah, there was the screwball answer Shuuichi had been looking for. He moved on to the next section marked in red ink. “’It is strictly prohibited to…’” Shuuichi stopped and stared incredulously down at the paper. “…Are you trying to pull one over on me?”

“Read it out,” was Seiji’s only reply. He sounded remarkably long-suffering.

With a decidedly dubious expression on his face, Shuuichi read, “’…to fatally poison a colleague. If caught, the perpetrator is required to pay 50,000 yen to their victim, or, if the victim has passed on, to their surviving family.’” Shuuichi opened and shut his mouth again. He suspected he looked like a fish gaping for water, but really, this… “Isn’t it just… _understood_ that you don’t go around poisoning people?” he asked, bewildered. “I mean, come on, this is the twenty-first century.”

Seiji shrugged, looking distinctly unruffled. The wind buffeted the grass back and forth, momentarily obscuring him from view. “I wasn’t sure if you had up-to-date information. Fatal poisons were only banned here about thirty years ago.”

“Wha-Thirty years ago?! Are you serious?!”

“Yes. From what I understand, the decision was not universally beloved, so non-fatal poisons were spared the purge.” Seiji plucked a stalk of grass and bent it round his finger. “So if you want to slip something in someone’s drink that will leave them with a nasty headache the following morning, that’s still perfectly acceptable.”

Shuuichi nursed his forehead in his hand. “Suddenly, I’m learning more about you than I _ever_ wanted to know,” he grumbled.

A short, giggling laugh followed. “Get used to it. You might even find yourself doing that eventually.”

 _Is he_ serious?! _Really serious?_ Shuuichi glared down at Seiji. “Hey, Seiji, I don’t know if this has occurred to you, but where _I_ come from, we don’t poison people just because they’ve pissed us off. Fatally or not.”

Seiji propped himself up on his shoulders. He frowned deeply, any trace of humor forgotten. “Where you and I come from is the same place, Shuuichi-san,” he said sharply. “If you really want to be an exorcist, I suggest you remember that.”

“Look, I didn’t start reading my family’s old research notes so I could start feuding with every exorcist I ran into.”

“Obviously.” Seiji’s tone was terse. “Your blood makes you a target, nonetheless. If you blind yourself to that, you’ll never get anywhere. You’ll wash out long before you can.” He narrowed his eyes. “Why _did_ you decide to become an exorcist? You’ve never said.”

Something black scuttled at Shuuichi’s wrist, just barely peeking out from under his sleeve cuff. “None of your business.”

Seiji lied back down on the grass, and Shuuichi moved on to the next section. “’Dueling of any kind is strictly prohibited. This includes dueling either personally or through proxies, with spells and with physical weapons, and dueling either to the death or to first blood.’” Shuuichi leaned back, perplexed. “Dueling? People still do that?”

Seiji bent another stalk of grass over his fingers; the green smell wafted up to Shuuichi’s nostrils, strong, almost acrid. “It was a failed experiment by a head of my clan and a head of yours to give exorcists a more… straightforward means of working out their aggressions. It didn’t last very long—just from 1810 to 1822. Probably because they were barred from fighting with swords or firearms.”

“So what did they fight with, then? Staves?”

“Yes, that, and anything they could get their hands on, really. Broom handles, shovels, planks; I once read about a duel where one of the duelists was armed with a table leg.”

Shuuichi snorted. “Okay, now I know you’re lying.”

“Oh, Shuuichi-san, do you really think I would do that?” Seiji asked, his lips twitching.

“ _Yes_.”

“I’m wounded,” But his eyes glittered mirthfully.

Shuuichi read on in silence, occasionally stopping to stare off at the sky. As he did so, a faint bronze cast started to appear at the margins, just touching the horizon. He supposed he could have done this at home—and honestly, Seiji getting the idea that he thought he needed any help understanding the rest of it was pretty intolerable, as far as ideas went. But being out here, this felt much more… free, than being at home. He wouldn’t be missed so long as he showed up before supper, anyways. There wouldn’t be anything to explain.

The rest of the parts Seiji had written out just seemed to be, well, rules about manners. Yes, manners, over half of which Shuuichi had seen other exorcists break at least once since he’d started going to meetings—come to mention it, he was pretty sure he’d seen Seiji break a few of these ‘rules’ too, though none that were penalized with fines or being banned from the next two or three or four meetings. Shuuichi supposed he trusted the information more than he would have information on spell circles or on sealing an ayakashi; he sincerely doubted Seiji would ever genuinely try to give him a leg-up on _that_ (And frankly, Shuuichi wouldn’t have accepted it even if he thought Seiji wasn’t trying to trick him).

Honestly, he wouldn’t have expected help even for something like this. Shuuichi looked over at Seiji, who was staring off at the forest beyond them, thoroughly oblivious to Shuuichi’s scrutiny. He bore an uncharacteristically absent smile on his face—or maybe it was just odd for Shuuichi to see him without any hint of a scheme brewing behind his dark eyes. It probably wouldn’t do him any good to ask, but Shuuichi couldn’t help but be curious…

“So,” he probed, mouth twisting ambivalently, “any reason for… _this_?”

Seiji shot him a brief look out of the corner of his eye. He shrugged his shoulders slowly. “It reflects poorly on all of us for a child of one of the old families to know so little.”

“Sure.” Himself, Shuuichi was still expecting this to turn out to have a massive price tag of some kind. What that price tag would turn out to be, he wasn’t exactly sure. It’d turn out to be something complicated, though, he knew that much. Nothing was ever simple with Seiji.

Something on the last page caught Shuuichi’s eye. It had been written in the bottom margin like it was nothing more than an afterthought, but to see it, it rang a bell. “’All exorcists are expressly forbidden’…” Shuuichi paused in his reading, brow furrowed. “…’to make any contract with an ayakashi using the ayakashi’s true name.’” He frowned down at Seiji, who had taken to twirling a small white flower between his thumb and his forefinger. “Why is that, anyways? Takuma-san told me the same thing, but he wouldn’t tell me why it’s not allowed. I don’t see why _that_ would be a problem.”

At that, Seiji turned his full attention back to Shuuichi. He said nothing, but the look he leveled on him—eyebrows raised and mouth pressed in an almost embarrassed line—was as thoroughly disbelieving a look as Shuuichi thought he’d been given by _anyone_. Shuuichi bristled. “Just tell me!” he said hotly. “It’s obvious I don’t know.”

“Ayakashi aren’t like us, Shuuichi-san.” Mercifully, Seiji seemed uninterested in ribbing him regarding his ignorance of this point. “Whether you use an alias or your true name on a contract won’t change much; your power isn’t centered there. But as for ayakashi, if they sign a contract with their true name, their full power is at the contracting exorcist’s disposal, whereas if they signed with an alias, they can hold back. It also subordinates their will completely to the exorcist they’ve contracted with. When an ayakashi hands over their true name to an exorcist, there is no order they can refuse, even if that order is sure to end in their death.”

Shuuichi’s frown only deepened. Reluctantly, he said, “I still don’t get why that wouldn’t be allowed. Wouldn’t it be a good thing for an exorcist to be able to call on an ayakashi’s full power?” He didn’t like making such an explicit showing of ignorance to Seiji (who, let’s face it, typically responded with all the restraint of an especially rapacious cat), but this genuinely did not make sense. Shuuichi had gotten the impression that many, if not most exorcists relied heavily on their shiki’s aid in sealing or exorcising targets. He’d _definitely_ gotten the impression that the community at large did not consider any ayakashi to be someone to befriend or someone whose feelings ought to be taken into account. People who thought otherwise were the exception, not the rule. With that in mind, you’d think getting ayakashi to put their real names on contracts would be encouraged, not verboten.

Seiji sat up and stared at him intently, making Shuuichi’s skin prickle uncomfortably. After a long moment, he began to wonder if Seiji didn’t think he was lying. “I already told you, I don’t know,” he pointed out, meeting Seiji’s gaze squarely. A cloud passed over the sun, dousing them both in soft shadow. “Will you just tell me already?”

Finally, Seiji nodded. The look in his eyes was decidedly cool. “If I remember correctly, it was finally decided a few years _after_ your clan closed up shop. But there had been arguments back and forth for years before that. I’m amazed you never even came across a hint of that in your own—“

“I don’t need you to tell me when my family quit, Seiji. I _know_. I want to know why this—“

“And you’ll find out, if you can just keep your mouth shut long enough for me to tell you why.” There was no hint of humor in those clipped tones. Seiji pulled a pen out of his book bag. “In fact, give me that paper; I need to write something else on it.”

Mutely, Shuuichi did so. He could guess this was more serious than he’d thought, though Seiji still hadn’t explained why. Seiji certainly wasn’t treating this like a joke; that much was clear. Whether or not he wanted to argue it out, well, he’d wait and see what he heard.

When he got the paper back, there were scrawled two addenda, in significantly sloppier handwriting than the neat script around it. _‘1: the ultimate taboo, and will be punished accordingly. 2: look up the Ayagawa incident.’_ “That—“ Seiji pointed at the second addendum “—took place, I don’t know, 1921, 1922. Your family was all but gone by then, but not entirely; there should be some record of it if you look hard enough—provided no one’s thrown away the records since then,” Seiji added in a distinctly disapproving tone.

“Nobody’s thrown away anything,” Shuuichi replied vaguely. _They’re too afraid to get rid of it._ “Now what is this all about?”

Seiji let out a soft, whistling breath. “It’s very simple if you think about it. With everything I’ve told you, how likely do you think it is that an ayakashi would willingly give their true name to an exorcist?”

“Not likely.” Add in the fact that ayakashi tended to distrust exorcists on principle and, yeah, that sounded about as likely Shuuichi flying to the moon under his own power.

Beside him, Seiji nodded, lips curling in a rather bitter smile. “Exactly,” he said softly. “Ayakashi who give their true names to exorcists willingly, without coercion or trickery, tend to be rather on the stupid side. Or just too trusting for their own good."

“So most have to be tricked.”

“Or coerced, yes. But you won’t find too many ayakashi who liked to be tricked by exorcists, even less who like to be coerced, and none who like it at all if the result is that they have to give up their true names. The result you end up with is a resentful, vengeful ayakashi.” His voice took on an edge keen as a knife. “And what do you suppose they’ll do if they ever find a way free of the exorcist who wormed their name out of them? Seek revenge, against the exorcist, or their friends, or—“

“Or their families,” Shuuichi finished for him, and suddenly, the soft wind felt cold.

Seiji’s shoulders sagged slightly. “Yes,” he said quietly, “or their families. Or sometimes, just anyone the exorcist might have spoken to while the ayakashi was in their service. It didn’t matter if the people it targeted could even see ayakashi or not. Like I said—“ Seiji’s eyes gleamed “—they’re not like us. They don’t discriminate nearly as well.”

Shuuichi would have bet that, in the course of the no doubt many personal feuds that had flared up between local exorcists during the years, family members who had nothing to do with the community had been targeted more than once. There was probably a reason so few exorcists who didn’t come from families specializing in the art were at all willing to talk about their families. But maybe Seiji just couldn’t see that. “And… what would happen to an exorcist, if they contracted with an ayakashi, using its real name?”

“They’d be gone.” There was an awful note of finality in Seiji’s voice.

Suddenly, being out here didn’t feel nearly as comfortable as it had.

“Well.” Seiji’s voice hit the air very suddenly, a little high-pitched. He drew a deep breath, zipping up his book bag as he did so. “I need to be going. Someone will come looking for me if I’m not home before long.”

“Yeah,” Shuuichi muttered. He unzipped his bag to slip the folder inside, but as he did so, a loose sheet of paper fluttered out. Shuuichi reached for the flyer hastily, but Seiji grabbed it first. _Nuts_.

“What’s this?” Seiji asked in a low voice, seemingly caught between curiosity and amusement as he read over the flyer. He raised an eyebrow at Shuuichi. “Drama club? Really?”

Shuuichi could feel his face growing warm, but he refused to be put on the defensive. “I’m thinking of joining next year. I need that _back_ , Seiji.”

A lopsided smile twisted on Seiji’s lips. “Well, you’re certainly dramatic enough for it. You’ll fit right in!”

“Yeah, yeah. Just think; if _you_ joined, you’d probably get cast as every screamingly obvious villain to ever exist.”

Seiji laughed brightly. “You’ve miscast me, Shuuichi-san. I’d be the villain no one suspects, who comes up and stabs the hero in the back in the third act.” He held out the flyer to Shuuichi, but didn’t let go when Shuuichi grabbed it. He smiled thinly, just barely showing teeth. “You know, don’t you, that if you go for this, you’re not going to have as much time to devote to exorcism?” he asked softly.

Shuuichi frowned at him, tugging sharply on the paper, but no give; Seiji’s grip on it only tightened. Something about that tone… “Yeah, I know that, Seiji.”

Seiji’s smile faded slightly. “Just making sure.” There was something brittle in his voice. Finally, he let go. “I’ll see you around.”

“I’ll bet,” Shuuichi replied, not quite making eye contact with him. He watched in silence as Seiji walked back up the hill and out of sight. Once alone, he sighed heavily. He supposed he had better head back to the school; Shuuichi figured Seiji probably hadn’t been serious about there being an ayakashi there, but it would have been remiss of him not to check. If it turned out Seiji was still slinking around, watching, he wasn’t sure what he would do in that case. He wasn’t sure what he thought of the idea.

As he was leaving, Shuuichi turned back and took one last look at the forest, and the sky beyond it. The wind blew through the trees, stronger now; the sound of the leaves rustling together was like a clamor of voices heard from far away. He felt… unsettled, and wasn’t quite sure why. Nothing was ever that simple.


End file.
